TheFateuniverse is home to so many beloved characters, be they historical figures reimagined, icons of fiction and legend, or the plethora of original characters crafted over the years. However, one group of characters tends to stand out more than the rest and that is the misleadingly plain protagonists which series creator Kinoko Nasu has penned through the years.
The visual novelFate/Stay Nightwas released in Japan on Windows in 2004 and became a hit that spawned countless multimedia spin-offs and adaptations, but it was only one part of a bigger universe. Within Type-Moon’s library of stories, Nasu had already written the visual novelTsukihime, as well as its prototype,The Garden of Sinnersnovel series, both of which share the same worldbuilding asFate.
RELATED:Has Ufotable Broken Anime Fans' Brains?
On The Surface
Depending on the fiction, the main character isn’t meant merely to be a central figure, but a vessel through which the audience or author can place themselves in the protagonist’s shoes. For instance, when Fate/Stay Night was first released, leading man Shirou Emiya would occasionally have their face obscured in the frame - a simple visual tactic to allow the audience to imagine themselves in the hero’s position.
The “Featureless Protagonist” is extremely common in media,be it visual novels or video games, and notably first-person shooters. However, not every medium allows for the interaction of the audience in the same way, and just because a character’s personality is left opaque enough to transpose ourselves onto them doesn’t mean we’ll have the incentive to.
There has to be some character to them, lest they be tedious, especially when the interactive element of one medium is absent in another. The thing with Shirou is that, apart from his red hair, he has a pretty plain look about him. He’s the odd man out compared to the cast of legendary heroes and mages surrounding him.
To name just a few of Nasu’s protagonists,Shirou Emiya fromFate/Stay Night, Shiki Tohno fromTsukihime, and Mikiya Kokutou fromGarden of Sinnersare all fairly unremarkable at first glance. Their character designs evoke a sense of normalcy compared to the modern fantasy hiding beneath their world. They aren’t often the strongest characters and are even heavily outclassed by their opponents.
Occasionally, they do possess some power under the surface, like Shirou’s limited magic orShiki’s Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. Although, these powers can be a point of contention for critics of these characters. Over the years, there have been tons of debates about whether Shirou’s victories against certain foes are earned.
To some, Shirou’s ascension as a hero comes off as wish fulfillment that eschews established rules, while characters like Mikiya can seem dull because of their lack of any combat prowess. But to people who have thoroughly read into these characters, complaints such as these come off as a bad-faith assessment. This is because the qualities that make these characters interesting are divorced from their combative achievements.
Hidden Depth
Despite being disregarded by some as just another harem protagonist or mocked for lines of dialogue that have been passed around as memes for years, many fansloveShirou Emiya. The reason is that there is a lot of complexity to this character, some of which might not always come through so effectively in the animated adaptations,as we’ve written about before.
Shirou tows a line between an average, ordinary dude, and a genuinely remarkable, kind soul. He’s charitable to a fault, even agreeing help to people to certainly don’t deserve it. He’s strong enough to fight, and audiences certainly would like to see it, but he tries to avoid hurting people. Just as he is stupidly charitable, he’s stupidly brave, rushing into conflict not out of bravado but concern for the lives of others.
Shirou suffers from survivor’s guilt and wrestles with his right to continue living. In the visual novel, there are times when he is happy spending time with the supporting cast when suddenly he is assailed by this feeling that he doesn’t deserve to be happy. Through his own perseverance and the support of others, he achieves self-affirmation and learnswhat kind of hero he wants to be.
Shiki Tohno similarly presents himself as a normal young man. He is kind, sociable, and possesses an almost absurd degree of empathy, sharing Shirou’s baffling likability. However, Shiki’s inner darkness haunts him with intrusive thoughts of violence and death and his power is extremely dangerous, only kept in check by his specially designed glasses. Despite this, he tries to be a good person, asserting that “just living is enough.”
Then, there’s Mikiya Kokutou, the weakest of the three, lacking the superpowers of the other two, but no less the kindness and empathy that makes the other two so fascinating and likable. Frankly, for as average as Nasu’s protagonists can come across, they make ideal boyfriend material, even if Shiki’s dark side is definitely… a lot.
Mikiya’s Origin (the root of one’s existence) is described as “one that will never hurt others, more so than anyone else,” which makes his kindness and lack of a “bite” especially fitting.Garden of Sinnersis ultimately a love story betweenhim and Shiki Ryougi (no relation to Shiki Tohno), a woman with multiple personalities and a murderous past. He is the moral tether in a complicated relationship with a person that isn’t easily defined as good or bad.
There is admittedly an edginess to the draws of these leads that might strike some audiences as trite. Nasu and his peers rose to prominence at a time when grimdark and edgy stories were especially big, but the appeal is not solely encapsulated in the tropes of the time. Functionally, these protagonists stand out and have an interesting place in their stories.
A Unique Kind of Strength
Shirou and Shiki have fights of their own, but a lot of Nasu’s leading men take a back seat to the battles of stronger characters -typically female heroines like Saber, Arcueid, or Ryougi. At first glance, it’s a cool reversal of traditional gender roles, but there’s more to it than that, as Nasu himself will tell you in critiquing his work:
If we think of strength as divided into physical and mental strength, I’ve depicted women as having difficulty acquiring the latter. One merely needs to pick up a weapon to overcome someone else physically, but mental strength isn’t so easily gained. [My] works grant strength of arms to female characters, while having the male characters embody strength of spirit. When I noticed this, I realized that some strong biases must have congealed within me.
-Kinoko Nasu, “A Dream of Shimmering Stars,” 2025-07-22
It’s commendable of Nasu to criticize his own writing in this way, even if plenty of fans love these characters regardless of underlying biases that might be interpreted. There are a lot of stories that appeal to the same demographics asFate, but few with protagonists quite like Shirou, Shiki, Kokutou, or any of Nasu’s other male protagonists.
We haven’t even touched uponSoujyuro Sizuki fromWitch on the Holy Night. While he might not be the only protagonist, he’s certainly the heart of the story. He’s ignorant of the workings of magic and serves as a surrogate for the viewer mostly. However, by the end, he demonstrates his own strength in a way that only his character could have accomplished, because of who he is.
Kinoko Nasu writes about male protagonists who are designed to be underestimated. They are surrogates for the audience to be introduced to a far more complicated world. In that, their strengths are often found in their spirits, and they achieve greatness not by meeting the standards of other characters, but by weaponizing said spirit in a way that onlytheyare capable of.
MORE:Cowboy Bebop: Life, Death, And Dreams
